Three senior staff members of a Carroll County-based aid organization were pulled alive from the wreckage of their hotel in Haiti after spending more than 50 hours trapped in rubble, the organization confirmed Friday morning.
"We're ecstatic. That all of them were found alive in the rubble is just miraculous," said Douglas Bright, vice president of IMA World Health in New Windsor.
The three are IMA president Richard Santos; Sarla Chand, vice president of international programs; and IMA Haiti program manager Ann Varghese, who lives in Baltimore. When the earthquake struck Tuesday, the three had just concluded a meeting at the Hotel Montana in the capital of Port-au-Prince. The hotel collapsed and IMA had received no word from its staff members.
Bright said he learned close to midnight Thursday that Santos and Chand had been found alive. Subsequent reports brought news that Varghese was safe. In addition, Bright said the people they were meeting with at the hotel, including a former IMA board member, were rescued.
Bright said Santos told ABC News that he and his stranded colleagues shared a lollipop during their long ordeal. Santos is the father of two young sons and often carries lollipops with him, Bright said.
"They said they were well and certainly appear to be well," said Bright, relaying comments that the three made to family members and other IMA officials. Chand and Santos spoke to ABC News from the scene after their rescue. Santos also phoned IMA's director of human resources, Gary Lavan, around 2 a.m. Friday.
At 10:30 a.m., whoops and cheers resounded from a conference room at IMA's headquarters as Lavan officially told about two dozen staff members what they had been hearing — that Santos, Chand and Varghese were safe.
The good news lowered the tension level of the past two days, said Bright, dressed more casually than usual in jeans and sneakers because of the week's events.
"There's a lot of elation all around," he said. "I've seen more hugging going on this morning than you'd normally see in a workplace.
Everybody's just happy."
IMA's offices are on the campus of the Brethren Service Center in New Windsor. Several buildings, some built prior to the Civl War, sit on a ridge overlooking cornfields, red barns and grain silos. A lean organization, IMA employs about 30 people locally plus about 50 at its overseas offices.
Five Haitian employees of IMA were still missing, however, including a doctor who ran the organization's local office. None of the Haitian staff members attended the meeting; they worked out of a small building in Petionville outside the capital.
Dr. Abdel Direny ran the office, aided by a pharmacist, bookkeeper, general assistant and driver. IMA set up a Facebook page, Haiti IMA World Health, with photos of all eight.
According to his biography on IMA's Web site, Santos joined the group in October, from International Relief and Development, based in Arlington, Va., where he was director of communications and advocacy. Before that, he worked with Church World Service Inc. as coordinator of strategic planning and evaluation, coordinator of technical resource, country director for Indonesia and program officer in Bangladesh and in Vietnam.
Santos has devoted his career to alleviating human suffering around the globe, whether from a comfortable office in Washington or an impoverished village in Cambodia, according to a former co-worker, Liz Creel. In the face of huge need, he maintained a sense of idealism, albeit one salted with real-world pragmatism, she says.
"He was a true believer in the possibility that people could really make a difference," Creel said, "particularly in a very difficult environment."
A former president of IMA, Paul Derstine, said Chand has spent most of her professional career with the General Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church.
"She is the consummate professional, setting high standards for herself and her colleagues," he said in an e-mail. "But she has a heart for the undertrodden and at a time in her life where she could be 'backing off,' she has taken on major global program interests for IMA."